


MCU Scraps

by Sholio



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 11:38:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5742373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ficlets and vignettes too short or incomplete to post as their own stories. I'm starting one of these for each fandom I'm currently writing in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This first vignette was posted for Fandom Stocking 2015, [originally posted here](http://fandom-stocking.dreamwidth.org/555747.html?thread=12003043#cmt12003043).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now [another vignette](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6064243) in this universe (written for the same recipient as the original Fandom Stocking ficlet).

Afterwards, none of them could agree on whose idea it was. Bucky claimed it was _obviously_ Steve's, Steve said it had to be Natasha, and Natasha merely smiled serenely and asked if it really sounded like something she'd come up with.

The one thing they could agree on was that the idea came up during one of far too many nights in too-close quarters with too many people around. The new SHIELD headquarters was hours from the city and a decent drive from even the smaller towns in the area -- better for training (considering that "training" often involved a lot of collateral damage), but it meant everyone lived on base. A lot of money (Tony's money, mostly) had been thrown into building the place, but it still felt to Steve like base housing anywhere: nicer than during the War, of course, but it was still a strange bunk in a row of small rooms, and cafeteria food served in an open mess hall. Steve didn't really mind, but he suspected Natasha did and he knew Bucky did; Bucky, in fact, rarely spent the nights at the base at all, instead vanishing off to God knew where.

So the three of them bought a house in upstate New York.

It was about a 45-minute drive from the new base. It was an old farmhouse, a big rambling structure on ten wooded acres, the remains of an old farm that had been sold off in bits and pieces over the years. What remained now was the house and yard, a large garden, and nine and a half acres of overgrown fields and orchards.

To Steve, a city boy born and raised, it was like some sort of fantasy wonderland, the kind of place that had been distant as the moon to him as a child. He loved exploring the mysterious byways of the woods behind the house. On their brief, precious moments of downtime between missions, he worked on clearing poison ivy, trimming back overgrown brush, trying to get the orchards producing fruit again. In the meantime, he discovered old outbuildings covered with honeysuckle vines, abandoned farm equipment with blackberry brambles climbing on it, and families of deer wandering through the old fields. He bought a bird book to identify the various birds that came around, ignoring Natasha and Bucky's friendly mocking.

The house had been built in an era in which people had large families, so there was plenty of room for things like an indoor gym. They constructed a running track and a bunch of shooting and knife-throwing targets around the property. In the woods they practiced tracking and hiding. Bucky taught Steve how to install mine trip wires, while Natasha dangled upside-down from an apple tree, critiquing their technique.

"We could get some chickens," Steve remarked. 

"What are you doing, going down some kind of farmer checklist or something?" Bucky wanted to know.

"Besides," Natasha put in, "they'll all die the next time someone gets kidnapped for three weeks by HYDRA."

"That was _one time!"_

For a long time, no one but the three of them knew about the place. Steve wasn't naive enough to think that SHIELD didn't know where they went at night, but at least it wasn't official, and Bucky and Natasha kept the place thoroughly swept for bugs and booby traps.Natasha bought it under a name not her own, and while they never took any particular pains to cover their tracks or hide their location -- well, Steve didn't, anyway -- there was a tacit understanding between the three of them that it was _their_ place. Not a safehouse, not quite, but a place to go.

Their place.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what made me look at this prompt in such_heights' kissing fest last May:
> 
> "Natasha/Rhodey/Sam/Steve/Vision/Wanda, team building"
> 
> and go, "OH YEAH I CAN TOTALLY WRITE THIS" ... but I totally did. XD It's mostly gen but there are a few (implied) actual pairings in here. [Originally posted here](http://such-heights.dreamwidth.org/459287.html?thread=8273431#cmt8273431), and thank you SO much to everyone who left feedback that I, ahem, never responded to, because FAIL. But your comments delighted me; thank you. ♥

"You want us to _what?"_ Rhodey says blankly.

They are all arranged in a circle, as per Natasha's instructions. Now everyone is staring at her since she's reached the _second_ part of the instructions.

Natasha smiles her sphinx smile, and repeats herself. "You turn and kiss the person to your left. It's a team-building exercise. It builds trust and encourages team bonding. We did this at SHIELD."

"You did _not_ do this at SHIELD," Sam protests. "Steve, did _you_ do this at SHIELD?"

Steve is about 90% sure Natasha is totally trolling them, but he just holds up his hands. "Hey, the lady's in charge today. I'm following her orders, same as the rest of you."

"So, like ... on the cheek, on the lips, what?" Rhodey wants to know.

"Wherever you like. I'll start." Natasha turns to Wanda, who is kneeling next to her. The girl stares at her nervously. Natasha kisses her lightly on the corner of the mouth and smiles at her. "Your turn."

Wanda smiles shyly back at her, then turns to Rhodey, on her left. He gives her an encouraging smile. She leans forward and places a quick, light peck on his cheek.

"See?" he says. "Wasn't so bad."

Her sudden smile is bright. They've been getting these little peeks through the clouds with Wanda lately. Natasha and Rhodey can bring it out better than anyone else can.

"Your turn," Wanda says, a little more confidently.

Rhodey turns to Vision. For a moment the two of them stare at each other.

"You are supposed to kiss me," Vision says politely.

"I _know_ that." 

There's another long pause. Sam clears his throat. "Pucker up, Rhodes. We don't have all day."

"That's Colonel Rhodes to you, _Sergeant_." Rhodey turns back to Vision, who is still watching him with warm, curious eyes. "Have you ever kissed anyone before?" Rhodey asks him.

"No," Vision says. "I have not."

"Well, then." Rhodey leans forward. Steve's totally expecting him to do what Wanda did, and give him a perfunctory peck on the cheek, but instead Rhodey kisses him on the lips, and kisses him long and slow. Rhodey's eyes close. Vision's, after a moment, do likewise, like a contented cat's. 

Rhodey draws back and sees they've become the center of attention. "What? It's the guy's first kiss! He needs to have a decent one."

Vision turns to Sam with parted lips.

"The cheek," Sam says. "On the _cheek."_

"It's important not to kiss people in ways they're uncomfortable with, Vision," Natasha says. She pretends to ignore Steve rolling his eyes at her, because _hello, mall-kissing hypocrite._ "That's part of what this exercise is for, to become more comfortable with your teammates and their level of comfort with you."

So Vision kisses Sam lightly on the cheek, a brush of the lips, in an apparent imitation of Wanda's kiss. "Is that done well?" he asks.

"It's perfect," Sam tells him. "Aces, man."

Vision smiles.

This is all working out a lot better than Steve was expecting. Nat's good at people; he forgets that, sometimes. Then Sam turns to him, and he thinks, shit. Somehow he'd forgotten that the kisses were going to come around to him eventually.

But ... it isn't awkward. He was expecting it to be, but it's not. They've been under fire together, after all; they've pulled each other's battered bodies out of wreckage. After that, this is just ... it's just a kiss. And maybe that's the whole point Natasha wanted to make. Sam leans in and gives Steve a light, closed-mouth kiss on the lips. His lips are soft.

Steve turns to find that Natasha has turned her face up to his, her eyes half-closed. Well. If that's how it's going to be. He kisses her very lightly on the cheek, just in front of her ear. "Wouldn't want to make you uncomfortable," he tells her.

She playfully scowls at him.

"Lunch?" Wanda asks hopefully.

"Lunch," Rhodey agrees.

"I would like to practice kissing some more," Vision says.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was a Steve & Bucky snippet I wrote a year or so ago, from a longer fic that never materialized, and posted in last year's Fandom Stocking [here.](http://fandom-stocking.dreamwidth.org/480862.html?thread=9595230#cmt9595230) The general idea was that Bucky never got his memories back, or ever went back to being _Bucky Barnes_ exactly, but went on to become friends with Steve  & co. anyway. This snippet, the only part of the fic I ever really wrote, takes place after Steve's been hurt; he's in a hospital bed, and possibly they're all hiding out in some kind of SHIELD bunker? And there have been problems with Bucky feeling like Steve is trying to push him into the mold of pre-Winter Soldier Bucky.

It was one of the strongest memories he'd had yet -- just a flash, as usual, but a vivid one: shadow puppets on the wall, and Steve, fragile and thin, helplessly laughing until he coughed. 

"I used to make you laugh," Bucky said softly. "When you were sick."

He offered it up like a gift, or more like a sacrifice: a piece of his heart speared on a platter. _Yes. I remember something. Do with it what you will._ The look Steve gave him was sudden and startled, made no less so by the bruise across half his face, swelling his eye nearly shut. And Bucky tensed, though he knew he shouldn't, but all Steve said was, "Yeah. You did."

"I can't do that anymore." Maybe it was coming so close to losing Steve -- thinking he _had_ lost Steve, this near-stranger with an almost familiar face -- that made it easier to hand out truths. "I don't know how."

Once the words were out of his mouth, it seemed like a capsule description of his entire life. He retained the ability to kill people in a hundred different ways, and the compulsion to run those scenarios in his head even when he didn't want to. Making a sick friend laugh? No.

"I think you might be selling yourself a little short," Steve murmured. "But." A light squeeze of other fingers on his own. "Maybe that's not -- maybe that's what _I_ do now. Make you smile. That's _my_ job now."

Bucky wasn't sure what to say to that, so he said nothing. If that was Steve's job, he wanted to ask what his was, if he couldn't even do that simple thing.

He didn't have to ask, though, because Steve went on, "And you keep lookout. Watch my back. So I can sleep."

"Okay," Bucky said, a little relieved. _That_ was easy. He had a dozen knives and three guns hidden on him. If anyone came through the door and tried to bother Steve -- well, he would definitely check they were HYDRA first before using any knives. But they wouldn't get to Steve while he was here.

He could do that.

Steve was silent for long enough Bucky thought he might have fallen asleep -- still holding his hand, though, and Bucky didn't want to disturb him by letting go -- when finally Steve murmured sleepily, "You know, I think we might have had a chance to ... I mean, some people wonder -- would I still be friends with this person, if we met under different circumstances? Would we still like each other, if we were different people?" His voice was drowsy, maybe not even aimed at Bucky at all -- maybe an internal monologue escaping to the surface. Then his eyes focused and sharpened, still half asleep, but looking at Bucky now. "We found out, though, didn't we? In the hardest of all possible ways, but ... if we started again, as strangers, we'd still become friends again. _Are_ friends. You're not the same. I'm not the same. Started over from zero, I guess, and ..." His voice trailed off; his hand was tight on Bucky's. "Friends," he whispered. "Now. With you -- who you are now, not who you were. On my end, anyway."

Bucky didn't speak, _couldn't_ speak. Instead, after a moment of frozen stillness, he lightly rubbed his thumb in circles over the back of Steve's cold hand. There was something familiar in that. Maybe he'd done it for Steve at some point in that long-distant past that no longer seemed a part of him.

Friends. Now.

"Yes," he whispered, and Steve seemed to relax, going loose and boneless in the bed. "Friends. Now. With you." He wanted suddenly, irrationally, to add _Always_ , but that was coming from some other part of him, from some vestige of Bucky-that-was. He'd had Steve cut out of him once, along with everything else. It could happen again. But he didn't want it to be, and that was something, wasn't it?

There was no always. There was just now.

"Watch your back," he said quietly. "So you can sleep."

Steve nodded, and smiled sleepily. It was bright and infectious and warm as the sun, and Bucky couldn't help smiling back.

He kept holding Steve's hand, even after the cool fingers went limp in his.


End file.
